In-Between

Professor Mark Wagner’s course offered this semester,
HNRS 2013: Arab and Jew in Literature and Film, studies the dynamics of Middle
Eastern culture focused on these two groups and how they interact.

“It's about cultural contacts between Jews and Arabs
mainly in the modern period,” said Wagner. “The class moves geographically to
various places where there was this sustained contact between Jews and Muslims—
first to North Africa and to Yemen, to Iraq, and to Egypt.”

The class is based not only in the literature and film
generated from these two groups, but also in the history surrounding their
past. Wagner provides a brief pre-modern period breakdown for the students to
better understand the modern period that represents the main area of study in
the course.

“Before we discuss the modern period, we talk about
Muslim Spain, which becomes this powerful symbol for tolerance or living
together in a creative and productive way,” said Wagner.

The remainder of the course covers the current issue of
Jews living in Islamic states and Muslims living in modern Israel. One of the
primary interests of the course, said Wagner, is discussing the problem the
Arab Jew faces: existing between two powerful cultures.

“The third part of the class is about Modern Israel. We
talk about this dynamic of being culturally in-between,” said Wagner. “We have
Jewish writers and Jews who are living in a kind of Arabic experience in the
Middle East, and Arabs who are writing in Hebrew. I'm interested in these
people who find themselves in between these two cultures, which is certainly
not unusual, but in this particular case it's in-between two fiercely antagonistic
cultures.”

For Wagner, confronting these issues prompts dozens of
questions involving identity, language, and what constitutes a homeland.

“So there are some more general predicaments that these
people find themselves in, whether they're Jews in the Arab world or
Palestinians in Israel. It has a lot of universal resonance of not belonging,
of taking on different roles depending on who one is around and who one is
interacting with, of being an actor constantly.”

The course covers these questions through extensive
reading and exposure to films that delve heavily into this subject matter.
These films include “Azi Ayima”, which explores Jewish roots in Morocco,
"Blood Relation", which tells the story of an Israeli family with
Muslim relatives, and "Forget Baghdad", which follows Iraqi Jews
writing in Arabic in Israel and who were active in the communist party in Iraq.

Wagner also assigns various readings for the students
that go hand-in-hand with the films. A selection of these assignments includes
Medieval Hebrew poems from Muslim Spain, a graphic novel titled “The Rabbi’s
Cat” which details the lives of a Jewish family in Algeria in the 1930s, and the
novel “Pillar of Salt” which explores themes of remaining true to one’s
identity in a changing world.

According to Wagner, he wants to give a different telling
of the Arab-Jew conflict than is normally told. For him, these cultures are
mutually dependent on one another through 1400 years of change and growth. There
is a balance between individualism and group dynamics that must be addressed.

“One of the points of the course is to show that Arabs
and Jews have been deeply involved in shaping each other's culture for 1400
years,” said Wagner. “We try to address the question of whether it is possible
to be in some sort of pluralistic setting and be one's self.”